Factory Town is like a lot of other places. It has a day. It has a night. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes it shines. It gets hot. It gets cold. People move in. People move out. Business can boom. Business can die. You can get hired. You can get fired. People get born. People get dead. People remember. People forget. Souls are saved. Souls are lost. Factory Town does not go away when you sleep. Sure, you dream. Sometimes you dream of Factory Town. Sometimes you dream of that other place.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

But the Shoe Remains

They are usually just lying there.On the edges of travel.Usually just one shoe.I have seen wingtip shoes with no executive attached.Engineer boots with no biker.Cowboy boots with no cowboy.Sneakers with no athlete.All kinds of shoes with nobody in them.Almost always old and dirty,with the toes curled up from use.

I know that you have seen them, too.Everybody sees them.Have you ever looked inside an old abandoned shoe?I do not have the courage to do it.I am afraid that I will seethe bloody top of an ankle or foot.

There are lots of good reasonsthat a shoe might be alone.It got thrown away.It was accidentally dropped there.There could be lots of good reasons.

There could be lots of bad reasonsthat a shoe might be alone.There was an accident and the clean-up crew left it behind.Someone had their foot chopped off with the shoe still on and then the shoe was thrown from the car.There could be lots of bad reasons.

The abandoned shoes that most concern me,are the ones by the railroad tracks.There is always the possibility that someone was walking by the tracks and fell or was pushed under a moving train and their foot was severed.

9 Comments:

How do you explain the abandoned socks? Sometimes I think all this forsaken footwear indicates a kind of cosmic background level of revelation, miniature versions of Moses' on Mt. Sinai, where suddenly the otherwise humdrum, even ugly roadside becomes too holy for anything but bare feet.

I have seen the socks. That is an entirely different manner and much more esoteric. It should only be discussed through private channels of communication. I know you will understand. But in a general sense all of this foresaken footwear really does indicate the background level of revelation that you spoke of in your post. Signs and portents everywhere!

this is truly the stuff of life...usually the shoes are mateless, but remember the pair of chuck taylors that hung tied together from a telephone wire over west seventh street for what seemed like years?